Seeds of Memory

by J. Richard Jacobs

  “Hmm—Vagnu was on the flyer arrival this morning,” Trak said. “I checked that out, and I know he stayed here. What do you suppose he can do on his own?"

  “Knowing Vagnu, he won't do much of anything on his own. The shagrat probably thinks he's found a way off Paz, but he won't make it.” A broad grin developed on Harko's face as he said, “With any luck, he'll freeze. Anyway, Wills and Sax are holding hands with the crazies at the shelter, while we finish setting up out here."

  Trak moved to the large screen on the wall and studied the detailed map displayed there.

  “There are three tracks into Ganeden. I think we can ignore the PNT, don't you?"

  “Probably. The weather alone will protect us from anything out of the north—for now, anyway—but concentrating on the tracks won't do us much good, either. Almost everyone up here uses rovers specially designed for the conditions ... and we know the Cadre does, too."

  “All the same—"

  “I know, but it's a safe wager that only locals and legal travelers will be using the tracks, which is why I didn't block them when we arrived. I did station check points at the three entrances to Ganeden proper, though."

  “So, how do you want to handle it?"

  “I think we'll need to spread out along a little over a rough quarter circle from southeast to southwest—and we'll probably need a block on the Coopersland track, just in case. That should cover the most likely entry points."

  * * * *

  The startup fires were intended only to warm the area surrounding the shrine for the benefit of the celebrants. At some point in the distant past it had become common practice to overdo things a bit, and it was obvious that the community of Ganeden, though small in terms of local population, was not going to be outdone by anyone on Paz. A veritable firestorm raged in the twenty-four pits arranged in a circle around the shrine, and the heat generated could be felt five squares away on the upwind side. With each painful step, Vagnu felt life returning to him as he forced himself toward the beckoning flames like the giant moth of Nuperz that can only fly during the heat of the Days of Disturbance.

  Beyond the wall of fire the community loomed, strangely orange, first bright, then dim, in cadence with the dancing fingers of flame that flicked at a crazy angle from the pits as the air, whipped into a frenzy by the fires, entered from all sides and competed with the prevailing wind from the north. Rising high above the pits a vortex of flame, bright embers and smoke curled vertically for a few meters, then raced off to the south. Revelers were already dancing or milling in the eerie light, and behind them stood the bloodied cutting tables, where racks of freshly butchered shako were stacked in silent anticipation of the hour to play their part in the celebration.

  Vagnu's count of those he could see from his side of the fires well exceeded the total population of Ganeden and its outlying region. Apparently Ganeden served as a meeting point for much of the Northern Territories and drew large crowds from all over the area—a much larger gathering than he'd expected in weather as bad as this.

  Perfect. The more there are, the easier it will be for me to blend in. I'll disappear here, and no one, not even Harko will be able to pick me out in this crowd.

  In the distance the flames were mirrored in the windows of several rovers docked along the street—a very encouraging sight. He took a quick look at his timepiece and smiled through his pain. It was already tenth hour, and in five or six more hours he would be on his way. In the meantime, he would join the festivities like everyone else and avoid attracting undue attention to himself. Vagnu had never been with the Outlanders during Halfyear, but he was sure he could fit in.

  Rounding the upwind end of the first pit, almost immediately he came upon the serving tables. A small group there hailed him.

  “Lo,” a man wrapped tightly in a blood smeared apron said. “Stranger on the Plate, eh?"

  “Yes,” Vagnu replied. “I have come to take delight in your Halfyear. Some friends of mine in the south told me that your celebrations have more energy and stick tightly to the tradition, not castrated by commercial interests. It is the energy and integrity I have come to enjoy."

  “Ya heard right, friend. Energy we have, and energy we show—though I think it may be to keep from freezing to an early term, ya know.” The man laughed heartily as he moved around from behind the serving table and approached Vagnu with an outstretched hand. “Name's Gavin Boyer, elected Cutter, but to tell ya true, I been elected every year fer twenty-five years. Hah! I don't know why they bother with the election any more. It's an honor to meet ya, sir. Give up yer name, friend, and—are ya direct-line, by chance?"

  “The honor is mine, Cutter Boyer. I am—uh—I am...” Vagnu thought quickly and, after surveying the crowd and seeing no one who might recognize him, decided it would be all right to use his name. “Dathan ... Dathan Vagnu of New London. And yes, I am direct-line."

  He hadn't expected to be accepted so readily, nor so heartily.

  “Ah, ya came so far fer energy, friend? Come, join us, Dathan of New London. We were just gettin’ ready to go to the shrine to make salute to the Ancients. Since ya came so far, would ya do us the honor of servin’ as the Hand, Dathan?"

  To be invited to serve as the Hand was an honor few were given—particularly strangers from outside the community. Indeed it was the first time in his life he had been extended such an invitation. The salute was a short ritual, and he would not be exposed long before he could again melt away into the group at the fires. Driven partly by the magnitude of the honor being bestowed and partly by ego, he humbly accepted Boyer's invitation. The revelers crowded around Vagnu, and moved off to make salute.

  At the heart of the roaring inferno stood the Shrine of the Ancients, a helical ladder of freshly polished bronze that rose several meters above the pits where the fires were beginning to dwindle to a less ferocious state.

  Boyer removed his stained apron and donned the bright red smock of the Cutter, while the revelers slipped a yellow one over Vagnu. Boyer raised his hands above his head, fingers spread wide, and waved them around to get the attention of all who had gathered at the shrine.

  “Friends,” he bellowed in a booming voice. “We have here a visitor from the south who is known by the name of Dathan Vagnu, but is better known by the straight line he can walk to his Ancient. I have selected him, and he has agreed to be our Hand fer this Halfyear of Paz year two-oh-eight at the transit of Vegamtu."

  An enthusiastic cheer rose from the crowd ... a cheer such as Vagnu had never heard. He had attended salutes every Halfyear of his life but had never seen such rich and honest enthusiasm. It was contagious and intoxicating.

  As he followed Boyer to the top of the ladder where the platform containing the Cup was located, the crowd below chanted with his every step, urging him on.

  “The line is straight, the line is pure,” they sang. “The line is straight, the line is pure."

  Boyer, reaching the platform where the heat from the surrounding fires was nearly unbearable, raised his arms and shouted in his resonant bass voice, “Friends, listen as the Hand speaks his number."

  Vagnu, not blessed with a powerful voice like Boyer's, moved to the edge of the platform and froze. The Cutter's hand wrapped over Vagnu's shoulder and Boyer, voice lowered so it would not be heard below, said, “It's all right, friend. Lots of people have a hard time findin’ their voice when they get up here. Go on and speak it now."

  “Friends,” Vagnu shouted, “My Ancient, the founder of the path in which I walk, was Gamma Nine dash two-oh-one. I offer the stuff of life in his honor and to the memory of the Ancients of all Pazians—Alpha to Omega."

  The roar from below was deafening as the Cutter drew the ceremonial knife from its sheath, the steely light of Vegamtu marking the sharpness of its edge, the flames flashing from the facets of twenty-four flawless gems set in its hilt.

  Boyer raised the blade for all to see, then pointed it to Vegamtu, twisting it slowly in the light. At the exact instant
Vegamtu reached the local meridian he brought down the knife and dragged it slowly across Vagnu's open palm. The blade was so sharp Vagnu felt nothing. He held up the open wound for the crowd to see, then tilted his hand down, allowing the blood to trickle along his fingers into the Cup. The throng went wild.

  * * * *

  Out of the twenty-six hundred who had shown an interest in continuing the journey of the Fathers, only five hundred and seventy-one remained. The exodus of the others had occurred when they learned of the difficulties and uncertainties ahead. To Niki's mind, it wasn't a bad percentage, for he, too, had been thinking a lot about the coming flight across unimaginable distances and time in search of something so rare as a planet hospitable to human life. What the Fathers had been able to do here, his people might not be able to emulate elsewhere—if there was an elsewhere to be found.

  From the Ancient Record Niki knew that Paz came close to duplicating Earth's conditions only twice a year, and that the remainder of the Pazian year would not have supported the natural development of human life so easily. Perhaps it would have been impossible. Only through the magic of genetic manipulation and other technologies had the human community of Paz survived and eventually thrived. If it were not for the Days of Disturbance, they could easily have overpopulated the planet.

  Now that the time for departure was drawing near, a new thought was taking shape in his mind. If they were fortunate enough to find a new world, hopefully more hospitable than Paz, might it not be wise to end the journey there? To allow the humans of that new world to grow and flourish without built-in foreign memories? On such a world they would mature and develop their own curiosity about what might be out in the void beyond their immediate reality—and then investigate it in their own good time, should they choose to do so.

  He had resigned himself to his role, but what the Fathers had done was introduce division, not harmony. He could see that now. A division that could—and might still—bring catastrophes far more devastating than anything Perigamia could produce. Why not start off the new world with the collected wisdom of the Ancient Record and let it go its own way? Maybe ... maybe that would be best.

  Everything Niki had set out to accomplish for the day was done, with the single exception of not a solitary member of the Cadre appearing. Vagnu still had not been located, but they knew he was in Ganeden. It was five minutes past eleventh hour. Salute had been made, the festivities were getting into full swing, and Niki had not been a part of it. He felt strangely empty. Niki stood alone, looking up at the featureless ceiling of the hall. The alignment had come and gone, the descending arc had begun, and the day of departure was at hand—the day when fourteen shuttles would lift clear of Paz to rejoin the singing shadow of his dreams in the blackness of space. He trembled.

  * * * *

  “Ops, this is Air Six."

  “Trak, here. Go ahead, Six."

  “Ma'am, I have a rover moving south at two hundred on a line two hundred and ten kilometers east of the beacon. Transponder's off, and its running down in the snow."

  “Stop it any way you can. Try not to injure anyone, but stop it."

  “Wait,” Harko said from the door where he'd been listening.

  “Hold on that, Six. What is it, Brand?"

  “That has to be Vagnu. He's on a shuttle hunt."

  “What makes you think it's Vagnu?"

  “That rover's coming down from the north. Cadre's going to be coming at us from the south or southwest. We know he came up here with the others and he didn't go back. Everyone in Ganeden is either still drunk or so spayberry-wine-sick they wouldn't be able to run a rover yet. That's Vagnu. Rescind the stop order, but continue surveillance discreetly."

  “Air Six, cancel my stop order but follow at a distance. No radar.” Trak turned away from her monitor and looked questioningly at Harko. “Now what?"

  “We wait. On second thought, we go into town to see if we can find anyone sober enough to tell us if they're missing any rovers—then we wait."

  “And what is it we're waiting for?"

  Harko wanted Vagnu alive if at all possible. He wanted that worthless bloodworm to hang in front of a very large crowd. Vagnu was not going to have the opportunity to go out in some misunderstood blaze of glorious martyrdom to the Generation—not on Harko's watch. Harko was resolute in the idea that nothing noble would or could be attached to the termination of either Vagnu or that shagrat, Frank.

  “We're waiting for Vagnu to come to us, of course. I know he will."

  “What if he makes it to the shuttles?"

  “What if he does? He can knock all he wants. No one's going to open the door for him. And the Cadre should come charging over the line any time now. If frustration doesn't drive Vagnu to us, fear will."

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself."

  “Yeah. It's a feeling I get now and again."

  * * *

  Chapter XXIX

  The night's maelstrom of flame had calmed to glowing coals, but the searing heat of the pits remained to distress the air into rivulets of undulating lenses that caused the scene beyond to writhe in a distorted dance. The Shrine of the Ancients rose above it all like a metal snake, its bronze skin hardened to a deep, glistening red that replied to the pulsating coals from the pits.

  Downwind, mounds of bodies slumbered beneath a cover of ash gray, awaiting the Cutter's call that would rouse them into the first day of the descending arc as Paz would carry them toward the pleasantness of Threequarteryear, then beyond to the hell of the Days of Disturbance, and finally to the beginning of another cycle.

  Boyer stirred and coughed loudly, sending a spray of ash into the brightening silver glow of the coming day. Rising in a spayberry-wine lethargy, he shook the ash off his black pelt and noted the dulling embers in the pits. Shivering from the jabs of freezing air that dove down to mix with the heat rising from the piles of black and orange, he selected a choice log from one of the neatly arranged stacks of Halfyear fuel and heaved it toward the center of the pit nearest him. The log crashed into the sea of coals, sending a cloud of bright orange points to their death in the cold, moist air above.

  “Vegamwun marks a new day,” he shouted. “Arise, it is time for rejoicing—time for waking to the dawn of Paz in renewal. Get up, you lazy shagrats, and greet the day, damn it."

  Niki laughed inwardly as he heard the Cutter's call and watched him rekindle the fires in a ceremonial reminder that warmth would come back, that this desolate, frozen Ganeden Plate would soon return to the green of Threequarter Year. Without knowing, the Cutter had given voice to Niki's inner feelings. A new beginning and a coming end of the familiar. He couldn't decide whether to shout out his eagerness for what lay ahead or weep with the melancholy that swept over him as the Cutter, still wrapped in his robe turned gray from his sleep in the settling ash, went from dreamer to dreamer, shaking them from their stupor into day one of the descent.

  Niki delighted in Halfyear as much as he detested the Days of Disturbance, and it had become his fervent hope that they would find a world where neither would exist in such extremes—a world where the price for Quarter and Threequarteryear was more affordable—a place where the ground wouldn't swallow large portions of the population. He wanted to find a world where the sky was clear enough to see the stars and where the seas were filled with fish of a less violent nature.

  “Lo, Cutter,” he called across the pit. “A good Halfyear to you, my friend."

  “Lo,” Boyer replied. “And a good Halfyear to ya and yer friends. Would ya like to share a steak and a cup? Always enough, ya know."

  Luto grabbed Niki's arm and squeezed. “I'm starved. Do we have the time?"

  “Sure we do. It has been a long night for both of us."

  “A very long night,” Shan added."

  Niki nodded solemnly. “I think we owe it to ourselves to enjoy something of this Halfyear. It will be ... our last."

  They joined with Boyer and others who had started the job of bringing back th
e flames by tossing logs on the coals with the careless abandon of bad-mannered onners at play, shouting, laughing and pushing at each another, until orange and yellow tongues lashed out and stirred the cold morning air into the frenzy of the night before.

  “Yer strangers to the Plate, too. Ya come up with Dathan?"

  “Dathan?"

  “Why, Dathan Vagnu of New London. Served as the Hand last night, ya know. Damn good one, too. Didn't flinch ner yelp like most of ‘em do.” Boyer lowered his head and peered at them through his brows. “Ya mean to tell me ya weren't here fer the alignment?"

  “No, we weren't,” Niki said. “And we didn't come up with Vagnu. Where is he? I'd like to congratulate him."

  So, Vagnu had participated in Salute. Why would he have taken the risk? He was trying to avoid Harko, of that there could be no doubt—so why would he join in the celebration in such a public display? Ego, no doubt, but Niki didn't think Vagnu was quite that stupid.

  “Don't know, friend. We shared a keg, so I imagine he's round here somewhere. “There's his robe,” Boyer said, pointing at a yellow cloth draped over the remains of a blackened shako rump.

  “Sorry we missed the ceremony,” Niki said, then turned to Luto. “Let's see if we can find—"

  “Niki. Niki Kaznov."

  Harko and Trak were running up the street toward them, jumping and dodging bodies strewn along the edges of the downwind pits as they approached. Aside from a final farewell, Niki had thought he was finished with Harko. What was it he wanted now, and why were they in such a hurry? Perhaps Frank had resurfaced. So much for the steak.

  * * * *

  Inside Twenty-three the only indication that anything was happening came from a momentary dimming of the lights and a muffled snap that sounded something like a high-tension arc being struck. Outside, it was quite different. The pulse guide protruding from the hull followed the path of the approaching vehicle, while a faint blue energy field built up along its length and slowly compressed into an eye-numbing white torus. It was followed by an explosion of suddenly released raw energy—energy that traveled unerringly to its target, burning a steaming hole through the atmosphere as it went.